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Monthly Archives: December 2009

10. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the SoulI remember seeing posters all around town in Austin at SXSW in March and being very intrigued by the premise of this project (David Lynch working with Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous with a roster of vocalists including Nina Persson, Julian Casablancas, the Flaming Lips, Suzanne Vega and Iggy Pop), so i was very disappointed when the record label basically shelved this project [though the book of Lynch’s photos is still being sold, cleverly packaged with a blank CD]. The production is top-notch, layered and more upbeat than you might expect from a Lynch project. you can still hear the whole album on NPR’s site.

my top 20 songs of the year list is coming soon along with commentary, but until then here are 5 of my favorite covers from the past year. All 5 of these are tracks that work as more than just a one-off novelty, worthy of repeated listens:

In theory, she was an artist you want to root for— all these ideas about art and celebrity and a flair for the dramatic. But the first few singles made the Lady Gaga project feel so presumptuous, her artsy entitlement overwhelming her songs’ occasional strengths. “Bad Romance” was the moment where the music didn’t just live up to the (self-inflated) hype, but surpassed it. The track is epic in construction— by the time she gets to the bridge, more than three minutes in, the realization that there are hooks yet to come is thrilling. It helps that RedOne’s production matches the songwriting’s torrential drama; the churning, earth-shifting low-frequency synths are a programmatic reflection of the singer’s unsteady, perhaps unwise, infatuation. But it’s Gaga’s performance, the wholly unapologetic fools-rush-in carnal energy, that commitment to emotional bravery in a context of increasingly twee chart pop, that makes “Bad Romance” feel so necessary. —David Drake